Author, keynote speaker, and customer experience consultant. Expert in customer service, the customer experience, customer centricity, hospitality, and building a customer-centric corporate culture. My most recently published title is "High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service." I'm an entrepreneur myself with a background in manufacturing, entertainment, marketing. I'm based in metro Seattle when not traveling. Reach me at 484-343-5881 or micah@micahsolomon.com

Five Customer Service Lessons From Comcast's Viral Contact Center Call

The epically awkward Comcast “client retention” call that tech writer Ryan Block recently recorded is this week’s, perhaps month’s, customer service outrage. More than other similar incidents, it seems to have stirred up emotions; just now an interviewer seemed clearly disappointed when I wouldn’t lay into Comcast as the source of all evil on the planet.

So, let me clarify here: The performance of the Comcast telephone representative (and his quote unquote managers who enabled his behavior) was a massive disaster. But the business lessons to be learned here shouldn’t be “Wow our company’s so much better than that; something like that could never happen here,” nor should they be along the lines of “Of course this happened at Comcast, they’re terrible in everything they do.”

Rather, let’s look at the specific customer service lessons to be learned, because they’re a lot more subtle. 1 An organization like Comcast needs to do absolutely everything it can to strive for cohesion. Comcast is a large, very complex organization, made of a variety of employee divisions and contracting companies. There is nothing wrong with using contractors, if and only if they are trained and held to the same standards as the home company (and, as an aside, if you’re not doing this to skirt labor laws or otherwise exploit employees). But with Comcast, my experience is the standards are rather all over the place. [Note: by "all over the place" I mean not only are they sometimes not up to snuff, but sometimes they're fabulous beyond my expectations, including repairmen -- and most recently a repairwoman -- who really know their stuff, who wear their little booties to not track dirt in the house, and who show up on time, though admittedly "on time" can mean arriving at hour 3, minute 55 in a 4 hour window due to that fun Comcast practice.]

Failing to train subcontractors to appropriate standards, while terribly harmful to a corporate reputation, is hardly unusual. I have secret-shopped four star and five star hotels where the overall experience was destroyed — destroyed! — by the haphazardly hired, terribly trained subcontracted valets, which is an unfortunate first and last impression when you’re getting everything right within the hotel doors. By contrast, have you ever used the curbside check-in at Southwest? Those men and women are so fabulous that they seem like actual Southwest Airlines employees–but in fact they are subcontracted. The secret is that they are trained, and when needed retrained, in Southwest procedures, expectations, and goals.

Comcast service van

2. People get twisted by incentives, and get confused about ultimate company goals. The rep on the phone for Comcast was obviously incentivized to retain this customer. Overly incentivized. Now, I don’t know that it was a financial incentive that pushed him over the edge. It may have been, instead, fear of losing his job. Or, it may have been an entirely different type of incentive, no less powerful: an understanding (or a misunderstanding) that retention at all costs and taking no prisoners was what was expected of him.

3 Teach your people — even your “retention experts” — to be graceful losers. Customer service, and business in general, is often about living to fight (or, in this case serve) another day. Restaurants know this–just because you look at the menu, peek through the window, and walk on doesn’t mean you are lost to that business forever. But you certainly won’t be back if the manager runs out the door and follows you down the block asking you to state your reasons for not dining with him. (Which–and then some–is what the “client retention expert” at Comcast did. Candidly, and at the risk of inspiring hate mail, I am going to concede that at the beginning of the call the Comcast agent did some things, gasp, right. As my friend and fellow customer service consultant Colin Taylor put it, he “made some cogent points toward the beginning of the call, and attempted to identify and overcome objections.” But then he went on some evangelical missionary spree, seeming literally unable to stop himself.)

4. Give your customers multiple channels to reach you–and make it clear you actually want to hear from them. Now, Comcast, to its credit, has done this. You can reach them, often quite speedily, via @comcastcares (thanks @comcastmike –you were super). I suspect the veteran tech writer who had the severe pleasure of recording this ridiculous call actually knew that, but proceeded with the call for the edification of all. Which is fine. But it’s better in general for both a business and it’s customers to have an alternative way to reach someone sensible when the train is going off the rails.

5. Hiring is (nearly) everything. No matter how bad a manager is, no matter how scarce the training, if you hire employees who are naturally empathetic, they will actually listen to the customers. Which in a situation like this is really a good start. Ryan Block was not staying with Comcast. Period. And the Comcast rep just wouldn’t hear that. Now, as a result, Ryan’s family, friends, and thousands (at a minimum) of others won’t be using Comcast either.

One reason hiring is so important is that a few bad hires can make a large, negative difference, and a few great ones can make a positive one, due to the effect of peer pressure. Refusing to let someone cancel his cable account until he argues with you for a long time is obviously aberrant behavior in most settings. But perhaps wasn’t in the contact center where the contact representative worked.

Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer experience speaker, and bestselling author.

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Do you have editors there? The article includes the word “exploint”. When did that become a word? You have this phrase in the article: “I’ve already been asked repeatedly to give expert customer service commentary on the subject,…” Really? How self-important. Who exactly asked you to give “expert customer service commentary”, whatever that is?

Sorry about the typo (now corrected). Congrats on your eagle eye, which I do appreciate. On the other point which seems to have angered you even more, I am interviewed frequently in a variety of media channels when someone wants a comment on the customer service issues of the day. A lengthy list of such outlets is on my site, or I can email it to you if you are interested and willing to give up your anonymity.

This is not really any news. This interaction is very standard in any of Comcast’s service calls. I cancelled my Comcast wireless and cable account six years ago. Almost every service call resulted in a very similar response as Mr. Block. At some point, people will find a way to stop the monopolization of cable tv.

Comcast is not an impotent company that cannot control their customer service interactions with subscribers. This was not the action of an “off the reservation” employee. To the contrary, what was so plainly demonstrated was the culture ingrained at “You Can’t Do Without Us” Comcast. My experience was similar to Mr. Block. I had been with Comcast for well over a decade and had no interest in leaving, but you reach a point where you say, “Enough!”. The difference was Mr. Block had the platform to expose Comcast and I didn’t. The only regret Comcast has is they attempted to intimidate the wrong person.